The lead author on a study that recommended a firmware update to help …

You'd think a study outlining how a simple console firmware update could save terawatts of electricity and billions of dollars in energy costs wouldn't be incredibly controversial. But judging by the comments on our recent story about that study, many readers had a few issues with both the authors' findings and their policy suggestions.

How they got to "30 percent" waste

One of the biggest criticisms of the study had to do with the core assumption that a full 30 percent of console owners are actually leaving their systems on 24/7, rather than simply hitting the off button when they're done playing. This data point is key to the study's claim that idle game consoles are sucking up roughly one percent of America's annual household electricity consumption, though regression analysis shows that the energy being wasted is still significant even with smaller ratios of irresponsible console owners.

While lead author Eric Hittinger confirmed to Ars Technica that he had no formal data to back up the 30 percent "always on" rate, he said he didn't just pull the number of thin air, either. Instead, he based the assumption on an informal survey of his friends (mainly through spying on their online status through Xbox Live and PSN) and from informal talks with family members, acquaintances, and extended social networks about their console use habits.

"Originally my assumption was that the numbers would be much lower—I originally assumed about 10 percent of people [would leave their systems on]," Hittinger said. But he said his informal survey found that "normal people" tended to pay much less attention to their energy consumption habits than the "techies" he was close with, and that people who aren't obsessed with technology are much more likely to simply leave their systems on all day. He also said that he increased the assumed waste rate a little bit to account for console owners that occasionally leave their systems on when they have to run out the door quickly, for example.

Hittinger said he realizes these kind of informal assumptions aren't ideal for a scientific paper, but said that his team is currently working on crafting a survey to get a more accurate handle on just how much time the average console owner leaves his or her system idling. In any case, he re-emphasized that a default auto-power-down feature would end up saving energy even if as few as seven percent of console owners are failing to turn their systems off regularly.

Energy Star standards for game consoles

In any case, the EPA is planning to weigh in on the issue of console energy waste by developing new Energy Star standards for video game systems for the first time. While compliance with these standards would be completely voluntary, consumers pay close attention to Energy Star ratings for appliances, and console makers will likely want the organization's seal of approval for their systems once it's available.

Energy Star's video game console standards, which are still being drafted by the EPA, will likely take into account integrated features like auto-power-down. But the organization may also set standards for how much power an Energy Star-approved console should draw when actively playing a game or video, which might compel console makers to scale back their systems' processing power a bit. Hittinger said one of the points of his paper was to show agencies like the EPA that such compromises on console power aren't really necessary to get significant energy savings.

"We wrote this paper partly to come down on the side of the console manufacturers," he said. "As we mention in the paper, you can save almost all of the energy just from the auto-power-down. So if you make that the only requirement, or at least loosen up the other requirements, it makes it a lot easier for console manufacturers to deliver the highest performing machines possible, which is what we prefer and most consumers prefer."

Improving the defaults

Since the data for the study was first collected in 2010, Hittinger says he's been heartened to see that both Microsoft and Sony have configured their newly sold systems to power down after extended inactivity by default. This is important, he said, because studies have shown that the vast majority of users simply don't alter the default power-saving settings for their various electronic devices. But Hittinger says he's still concerned about the roughly 75 million current-generation consoles released before this change was made, and says that pushing out a firmware update to turn on the feature would be a simple, effective way to gain a lot of collective power savings.

And Hittinger says console makers should be looking to the future too, by planning to implement a more robust sleep or hibernation function into the next generation of systems. That way, the hardware could save an image of the current game state before before going into an automatic power-saving mode, just like most modern PCs do. It's probably too late to easily add this kind of progress-saving feature to current game consoles, but if it's integrated into the next generation from the start, then the prospect of the energy-sucking, idle game console may become a thing of the past.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl

47 Reader Comments

Instead, he based the assumption on an informal survey of his friends (mainly through spying on their online status through Xbox Live and PSN) and from informal talks with family members, acquaintances, and extended social networks about their console use habits.

I wonder why he didn't just ASK MS, Sony and Nintendo about it, He should have been able to get that information if he agreed that he won't be leaking specific details and that it was for academic research.

I wonder why he didn't just ASK MS, Sony and Nintendo about it, He should have been able to get that information if he agreed that he won't be leaking specific details and that it was for academic research.

Well you'd have to find someone at MS, etc. who cared enough about the request to actually get the data, make sure it was properly anonymized, had the rights to access such data in the first place and so on. That basically excludes your average PR person and who else should he get easily access to? If he doesn't know anyone in the right position already that's easier said than done.

Still "We asked some people and they told us that" never should appear in a paper or report. Excuse my ignorance but since the whole GFWL stuff is interlinked by now, can't you access the online state of friends from the internet/a PC? Writing a small script that actually measured the percentage of time friends were online would certainly be a much better, even though still covering only a pretty small sample.

A firmware update seems pretty reasonable to me, but I really like his idea to add more robust sleep and hibernation settings to the next console gen. Not sure why those kinds of functions aren't standard already.

On a semi-related note: I remember one time when I was young I left my NES on all day by accident and it got really hot. Was kind of worried so I turned it off to let it cool down.

Problem with 'auto-power down' is that many games only allow you to save at X spot. If you are far from the next X spot, you can lose a lot of data with auto-power down, unless they are talking about just cutting back on the power usage.

It's important to note that if you have electric heat (which is actively in use - that is, it's not the middle of summer) then there is absolutely *no* waste from leaving your console, your lights, your computer, etc. on full-time. Any "waste" from your electrical devices is simply emitted in the form of heat. If this causes your electric heater to turn on less, you are functionally using the exact same amount of electricity that you would have been using without any electrical devices plugged in at all. It's simply a matter of what does the heating - your baseboard heater or your console for example.

However, this argument is not applicable if you don't have your heat turned on, if you're using an air-conditioner, or if you use natural gas or a heat exchange unit with central air, for example. For a lot of people living in apartments while it's not the middle of summer, though, you may as well never turn your devices off since it makes no difference in your bill.

All he needed to do was not publish a supposedly scientific paper on speculation and an insufficient sample of his friends. This is the worst type of paper. He wanted an answer, assumed he would get 10% and then upped it to reflect a totally non-professional sample solution. As in he guessed. Well goody, he published more crap science for the world to read.

It's important to note that if you have electric heat (which is actively in use - that is, it's not the middle of summer) then there is absolutely *no* waste from leaving your console, your lights, your computer, etc. on full-time. Any "waste" from your electrical devices is simply emitted in the form of heat. If this causes your electric heater to turn on less, you are functionally using the exact same amount of electricity that you would have been using without any electrical devices plugged in at all. It's simply a matter of what does the heating - your baseboard heater or your console for example.

However, this argument is not applicable if you don't have your heat turned on, if you're using an air-conditioner, or if you use natural gas or a heat exchange unit with central air, for example. For a lot of people living in apartments while it's not the middle of summer, though, you may as well never turn your devices off since it makes no difference in your bill.

Except that your electric baseboard heater is much more efficient at turning electricity to heat than your game console. Also, heaters are designed to spread heat over larger areas, not just where the exhaust fan is blowing.

Except that your electric baseboard heater is much more efficient at turning electricity to heat than your game console. Also, heaters are designed to spread heat over larger areas, not just where the exhaust fan is blowing.

Actually, no. The baseboard heater has the same efficiency as the console: 100% of the consumed energy gets emitted as heat.

But you are right in saying that the distribution of heat is not the same. The baseboard heater does a way better job at distributing heat in a room (it also produces more heat to begin with: there are no 250w baseboard heaters!)

Except that your electric baseboard heater is much more efficient at turning electricity to heat than your game console. Also, heaters are designed to spread heat over larger areas, not just where the exhaust fan is blowing.

You're right that it's designed to spread heat over a larger area, and that may have some effect, but it is absolutely wrong that a heater is "more efficient at turning electricity to heat". Conservation of energy + entropy: all energy eventually ends up as heat. This is applicable to any electrical device, indeed any machine which does work, by definition.

Problem with 'auto-power down' is that many games only allow you to save at X spot. If you are far from the next X spot, you can lose a lot of data with auto-power down, unless they are talking about just cutting back on the power usage.

On the PS3, the default auto power-off doesn't work when in a game or application, or during any type of media playback. If you really want to, you can tell the PS3 to auto power-off in all circumstances regardless of what's going on.

I've always been annoyed that there isn't any sort of suspend or hibernate function on my 360. Both work perfectly on any Mac I've used, and the excuse I always hear for why MS can't make it work on PCs is 'blah blah hardware diversity'. Well there's no hardware diversity on the 360, so....? At the very least a suspend function should be available (just refresh the RAM?), and hibernate should be an option if you have a hard drive installed.

I do have auto-shutoff enabled. A much bigger issue for me is that my damned shiny new LED-LCD TV won't auto-off when the 360 turns off. It just leaves a bright, energy-wasting, backlight-lifetime-consuming "NO SIGNAL DETECTED" banner up, forever. WTF, Philips?

Except that your electric baseboard heater is much more efficient at turning electricity to heat than your game console. Also, heaters are designed to spread heat over larger areas, not just where the exhaust fan is blowing.

You're right that it's designed to spread heat over a larger area, and that may have some effect, but it is absolutely wrong that a heater is "more efficient at turning electricity to heat". Conservation of energy + entropy: all energy eventually ends up as heat. This is applicable to any electrical device, indeed any machine which does work, by definition.

True, but to be really pedantic, the electric heater is probably more efficient for the locale. A game console has LEDs, produces sound, and mechanical energy(fans, drives). It very unlikely that all that energy stays within the system. Light escapes through the windows, sound through the walls, etc.

Except that your electric baseboard heater is much more efficient at turning electricity to heat than your game console. Also, heaters are designed to spread heat over larger areas, not just where the exhaust fan is blowing.

You're right that it's designed to spread heat over a larger area, and that may have some effect, but it is absolutely wrong that a heater is "more efficient at turning electricity to heat". Conservation of energy + entropy: all energy eventually ends up as heat. This is applicable to any electrical device, indeed any machine which does work, by definition.

There's also the consideration of lifetime and wear on the console. Leaving it on indefinitely shortens its life (how much is debatable, but all electronics have MTBF) so it doesn't make sense to turn a $300 console into a very low-powered heater when you can use a $50 one for much more heat output.

And you forget that some people have gas heaters, which tend to cost less to run than electric heaters, making the console a poor heater in comparison.

I've always been annoyed that there isn't any sort of suspend or hibernate function on my 360. Both work perfectly on any Mac I've used, and the excuse I always hear for why MS can't make it work on PCs is 'blah blah hardware diversity'. Well there's no hardware diversity on the 360, so....? At the very least a suspend function should be available (just refresh the RAM?), and hibernate should be an option if you have a hard drive installed.

I do have auto-shutoff enabled. A much bigger issue for me is that my damned shiny new LED-LCD TV won't auto-off when the 360 turns off. It just leaves a bright, energy-wasting, backlight-lifetime-consuming "NO SIGNAL DETECTED" banner up, forever. WTF, Philips?

are you implying that any windows pcs made within the last 20 years are not capable of auto shutdown/suspend/hybernate... please, get a clue. this is a hardware standard that has been built into any windows compatible oem and off the shelf components since before win95, it's a requirement for both MS and EPA standards.

what people here and possibly the author of this study are not realising is, this kind of feature may not be just as simple as a firmware update, both mainboard and power supply need acpi functions for this to work. I don't actually own a 360 but, the constant spamming of directions not to shut off your console for any save operations in the majority of pc ports would indicate to me that, there is no software based power management here whatsoever, thus no hardware interface for it to relay this information to. why would you manually shut it off, if there was a shutdown feature in the os?

same reason your tv may not have this, it's partially reliant on hardware that is just that much more expensive to produce, no matter how cheap it actually would be to include.

"But the organization may also set standards for how much power an Energy Star-approved console should draw when actively playing a game or video, which might compel console makers to scale back their systems' processing power a bit."

NOT A CHANCE, lol. Ok, so lets say Im thinking of buying an Xbox. It doesnt have the Energy Star rating. Am I going to buy a Wii or a Playstation instead because they have energy star ratings? NOPE. Im still buying an Xbox. If you are a kid and you want an Xbox, are you going to be OK with the fact that your Mom bought you a Wii because it had the energy star rating. NOPE. If you are anyone considering buying a console, does energy usage EVER come into the equation? NOPE. Also, what do gamers crave? Better graphics. You are not going to get Crysis looking games on the console by scaling back the processor. The first console maker to break away from the standard is going to have an advantage, better graphics. Gamers are screaming for better graphics not lower processing power(and therefore lower graphics). Personally if i were MS or Sony, I wouldnt give a damn about the EPA, or an Energy Star rating.

I've always been annoyed that there isn't any sort of suspend or hibernate function on my 360. Both work perfectly on any Mac I've used, and the excuse I always hear for why MS can't make it work on PCs is 'blah blah hardware diversity'. Well there's no hardware diversity on the 360, so....? At the very least a suspend function should be available (just refresh the RAM?), and hibernate should be an option if you have a hard drive installed.

I do have auto-shutoff enabled. A much bigger issue for me is that my damned shiny new LED-LCD TV won't auto-off when the 360 turns off. It just leaves a bright, energy-wasting, backlight-lifetime-consuming "NO SIGNAL DETECTED" banner up, forever. WTF, Philips?

From what I understand is that the xbox 360 does not support HDMI-CEC so thats why it does not work.

A firmware update seems pretty reasonable to me, but I really like his idea to add more robust sleep and hibernation settings to the next console gen. Not sure why those kinds of functions aren't standard already.

On a semi-related note: I remember one time when I was young I left my NES on all day by accident and it got really hot. Was kind of worried so I turned it off to let it cool down.

Well, here is a reason not to. I had the game Dead Island. I was in the habit of leaving it on while i watched a TV show, because it easier to remember where I was and start up again. Turns out, this game auto-saves periodically. Well, one night I realized I had left it on for hours and wasnt planning on playing again that night. So, I walked by the xbox and just hit the power without changing my TV over to the xbox. The next day I load up my game and sure enough, I corrupted the save file by turning it off during an auto-save(Im assuming) and I can no longer load my save game. 85% complete and I have to start over. Hardware hibernation would have to take this into account and Im not sure if it is feasible to add the types of settings the author is talking about without risking save corruption, even in a next gen console, let alone existing ones.

I've always been annoyed that there isn't any sort of suspend or hibernate function on my 360. Both work perfectly on any Mac I've used, and the excuse I always hear for why MS can't make it work on PCs is 'blah blah hardware diversity'. Well there's no hardware diversity on the 360, so....? At the very least a suspend function should be available (just refresh the RAM?), and hibernate should be an option if you have a hard drive installed.

I do have auto-shutoff enabled. A much bigger issue for me is that my damned shiny new LED-LCD TV won't auto-off when the 360 turns off. It just leaves a bright, energy-wasting, backlight-lifetime-consuming "NO SIGNAL DETECTED" banner up, forever. WTF, Philips?

From what I understand is that the xbox 360 does not support HDMI-CEC so thats why it does not work.

It works when hooked up to standard AV inputs. Also, the Xbox should have no effect whatsoever on the TV turning off when the screen says "no signal". The Xbox is out of the equation at that point and it is up to the TV to say "I havent had a signal from the current active input in xx minutes, time to power down". At that point you could have a toaster hooked up and the TV should still time out when it is not getting a signal from the current active input.

Problem with 'auto-power down' is that many games only allow you to save at X spot. If you are far from the next X spot, you can lose a lot of data with auto-power down, unless they are talking about just cutting back on the power usage.

BINGO. I pause games that only allow saving at certain points. That's partly the game's fault, but at the same time, you dont want to make some games able to save anywhere since it would take away form the challenge of the game, people would abuse it. Take Fallout as an example. It does allow you to save at any given moment. So, when Im having trouble with a certain part, I save before I start the task, I save when go through doors and I save after killing each major enemy. That way, if i die, im only ever maybe 5 - 10 mins worth of gameplay away from the part where I died, as compared to an hour of gameplay away. I dont know how many times Ive screwed up and died only to realize the last time I saved was over an hour ago. If you were to add this feature to some other games, people would walk through them in a matter of a couple days as compared to a game where it only saves after key points, which might take a couple weeks to get all the way through, simply because it is hard to beat the entire level, and you have to start the whole level over if you die.

It's important to note that if you have electric heat (which is actively in use - that is, it's not the middle of summer) then there is absolutely *no* waste from leaving your console, your lights, your computer, etc. on full-time. Any "waste" from your electrical devices is simply emitted in the form of heat. If this causes your electric heater to turn on less, you are functionally using the exact same amount of electricity that you would have been using without any electrical devices plugged in at all. It's simply a matter of what does the heating - your baseboard heater or your console for example.

However, this argument is not applicable if you don't have your heat turned on, if you're using an air-conditioner, or if you use natural gas or a heat exchange unit with central air, for example. For a lot of people living in apartments while it's not the middle of summer, though, you may as well never turn your devices off since it makes no difference in your bill.

Except that your electric baseboard heater is much more efficient at turning electricity to heat than your game console. Also, heaters are designed to spread heat over larger areas, not just where the exhaust fan is blowing.

Yes, but game consoles use the "extra" energy to actually run other processes. Where a heater does not use its wasted energy for anything. The heat in the case of a TV or console IS the waste. If that waste is being used for any good whatsoever then it is worth it. It doesnt matter if a heater uses les energy to produce heat, the console isnt trying to produce heat. But, if you live in a small apartment and your console, which will draw the same amount of power regardless, is also heating your living room up a little, then it is not a waste at all. I wouldnt use an Xbox as a base heater, but if it is producing something of value while at the same time running my games then so be it.

Simple, logical solution:Keep the option to toggle auto-off in settings.Set default setting to "on". (As in, auto-off will default to being on)Auto-save before shutting down. Games with "save point" style saving sould allow autosaving in this instance only.Push it out as a mandatory update.Problem solved.

There's also the consideration of lifetime and wear on the console. Leaving it on indefinitely shortens its life (how much is debatable, but all electronics have MTBF) so it doesn't make sense to turn a $300 console into a very low-powered heater when you can use a $50 one for much more heat output.

And you forget that some people have gas heaters, which tend to cost less to run than electric heaters, making the console a poor heater in comparison.

Fair point about the MTBF and wear on the console. I did mention gas heaters as an exception in my original post though:

nkinnan wrote:

However, this argument is not applicable if you don't have your heat turned on, if you're using an air-conditioner, or if you use natural gas or a heat exchange unit with central air, for example.

It's important to note that if you have electric heat (which is actively in use - that is, it's not the middle of summer) then there is absolutely *no* waste from leaving your console, your lights, your computer, etc. on full-time. Any "waste" from your electrical devices is simply emitted in the form of heat. If this causes your electric heater to turn on less, you are functionally using the exact same amount of electricity that you would have been using without any electrical devices plugged in at all. It's simply a matter of what does the heating - your baseboard heater or your console for example.

However, this argument is not applicable if you don't have your heat turned on, if you're using an air-conditioner, or if you use natural gas or a heat exchange unit with central air, for example. For a lot of people living in apartments while it's not the middle of summer, though, you may as well never turn your devices off since it makes no difference in your bill.

Except that your electric baseboard heater is much more efficient at turning electricity to heat than your game console. Also, heaters are designed to spread heat over larger areas, not just where the exhaust fan is blowing.

Yes, but game consoles use the "extra" energy to actually run other processes. Where a heater does not use its wasted energy for anything. The heat in the case of a TV or console IS the waste. If that waste is being used for any good whatsoever then it is worth it. It doesnt matter if a heater uses les energy to produce heat, the console isnt trying to produce heat. But, if you live in a small apartment and your console, which will draw the same amount of power regardless, is also heating your living room up a little, then it is not a waste at all. I wouldnt use an Xbox as a base heater, but if it is producing something of value while at the same time running my games then so be it.

I'd like to correct a couple of misconceptions here:

1) There is no "extra" energy, all energy a console takes "from the wall" ends up as waste heat. In the process of converting the low-entropy electrical power into high-entropy heat, work is done (game state and graphics calculated, etc.)

edit: Though as SheldonRoss correctly points out, a miniscule amount of the energy which a console takes in does "escape" from your home rather than being output as waste heat, in the form of light exiting a windows, sound though the wall, etc. That would probably be "down in the noise" / unmeasurable in comparison to the waste heat though.

2) A heater does not use less energy to create heat. The conversion is 1:1 (conservation of energy + the inevitable march of entropy). The heater just doesn't extract any work from the conversion and turns the electricity into heat directly.

are you implying that any windows pcs made within the last 20 years are not capable of auto shutdown/suspend/hybernate... please, get a clue. this is a hardware standard that has been built into any windows compatible oem and off the shelf components since before win95, it's a requirement for both MS and EPA standards.

O RLY? I'm not implying anything, I am saying it flat out. It may be a 'standard', but I've never had a homebuilt PC from the last 15 years actually be consistently competent at hibernation. Suspend started working reasonably well with Windows 7, but hibernate still fails to come back half the time. As I said, the excuse I've heard the most is that "hardware diversity is hard to handle".

genma wrote:

I don't actually own a 360 but, the constant spamming of directions not to shut off your console for any save operations in the majority of pc ports would indicate to me that, there is no software based power management here whatsoever, thus no hardware interface for it to relay this information to. why would you manually shut it off, if there was a shutdown feature in the os?

The 360 does stuff ACPI-style (don't know if it's actually ACPI spec). You shut off using a software function or by hitting a soft power button. It tells you not to shut down during save ops because shutdown commands talk to the 'OS' that the 360 is always running in the background, overriding any game functions and possibly breaking saves if games are interrupted.

"But the organization may also set standards for how much power an Energy Star-approved console should draw when actively playing a game or video, which might compel console makers to scale back their systems' processing power a bit."

WTF? Ok, so Kin24 and I are the only ones who find it disturbing when the author mentions that the EPA may put a governor on our computing power for the sake of saving a fraction of 1% of all electrical consumption in the United States per year? That's like saying cars should only be able to go 20 miles per hour since it would be more fuel efficient.

Not only is this line of thinking just plain stupid, it would also set a terrible precedent of governmental overreach.

"But the organization may also set standards for how much power an Energy Star-approved console should draw when actively playing a game or video, which might compel console makers to scale back their systems' processing power a bit."

NOT A CHANCE, lol. Ok, so lets say Im thinking of buying an Xbox. It doesnt have the Energy Star rating. Am I going to buy a Wii or a Playstation instead because they have energy star ratings? NOPE. Im still buying an Xbox. If you are a kid and you want an Xbox, are you going to be OK with the fact that your Mom bought you a Wii because it had the energy star rating. NOPE. If you are anyone considering buying a console, does energy usage EVER come into the equation? NOPE. Also, what do gamers crave? Better graphics. You are not going to get Crysis looking games on the console by scaling back the processor. The first console maker to break away from the standard is going to have an advantage, better graphics. Gamers are screaming for better graphics not lower processing power(and therefore lower graphics). Personally if i were MS or Sony, I wouldnt give a damn about the EPA, or an Energy Star rating.

This is a fair argument, but I think later on in the console generation, when a parent is deciding which of the $200 systems to get for her little Jimmy (who just wants to shoot things in Call of Duty 12), the cost of operation might factor into the decision. Thats where Energy Star might play a large role.

"But the organization may also set standards for how much power an Energy Star-approved console should draw when actively playing a game or video, which might compel console makers to scale back their systems' processing power a bit."

WTF? Ok, so Kin24 and I are the only ones who find it disturbing when the author mentions that the EPA may put a governor on our computing power for the sake of saving a fraction of 1% of all electrical consumption in the United States per year? That's like saying cars should only be able to go 20 miles per hour since it would be more fuel efficient.

Not only is this line of thinking just plain stupid, it would also set a terrible precedent of governmental overreach.

The government is just providing information that consumers want as part of a voluntary program. I don't see how that could fairly be characterized as "overreach."

There's also the consideration of lifetime and wear on the console. Leaving it on indefinitely shortens its life (how much is debatable, but all electronics have MTBF) so it doesn't make sense to turn a $300 console into a very low-powered heater when you can use a $50 one for much more heat output.

It's not quite as simple as that though. Regularly heating up (switching on) & cooling down (switching off) your console, or any other piece of electronics, can adversely affect its life expectancy because of things like solder joints cracking due to mechanical stress caused by thermal expansion / contraction.

Leaving it on 24/7 may actually increase an electronic device's longevity by virtue of keeping the temperature inside the casing relatively constant.

It's important to note that if you have electric heat (which is actively in use - that is, it's not the middle of summer) then there is absolutely *no* waste from leaving your console, your lights, your computer, etc. on full-time. Any "waste" from your electrical devices is simply emitted in the form of heat. If this causes your electric heater to turn on less, you are functionally using the exact same amount of electricity that you would have been using without any electrical devices plugged in at all. It's simply a matter of what does the heating - your baseboard heater or your console for example.

However, this argument is not applicable if you don't have your heat turned on, if you're using an air-conditioner, or if you use natural gas or a heat exchange unit with central air, for example. For a lot of people living in apartments while it's not the middle of summer, though, you may as well never turn your devices off since it makes no difference in your bill.

Except that this is a small minority of the time. Electric heating is a small component of total heating installations, and it' on a small percentage of the year. Most of the time, auto-off is an energy/money saver.

Problem with 'auto-power down' is that many games only allow you to save at X spot. If you are far from the next X spot, you can lose a lot of data with auto-power down, unless they are talking about just cutting back on the power usage.

That would be really easy to fix with either a suspend to RAM or hibernate mode which saved all current RAM and register information. I don't even think developers would care that hibernate would activate an "alternate" save state.

The numbers are still made up by any scientific measure and should not have been in the paper. It amounts to a cold fusion press release at that point.

I certainly wouldn't hire someone so slack with their research. He could have gotten hard numbers by randomly giving out kill-a-watts or similar to volunteers or surveyed a group of volunteers to let him add them to a friends list which was monitored by an external program. The very fact that these are social friends that he was drawing conclusion upon completely invalidates his results. They are inherently from a singular non-random or dispersed socio-economic background among other significant factors.

O RLY? I'm not implying anything, I am saying it flat out. It may be a 'standard', but I've never had a homebuilt PC from the last 15 years actually be consistently competent at hibernation. Suspend started working reasonably well with Windows 7, but hibernate still fails to come back half the time.

Don't know what the hell craptastic components you've been using to build your PCs, but we've been using sleep/hibernate on hundreds of machines since Win9x with only the occasional one failing. If a feature was that poorly implemented that every Johnny Random had trouble with it, it wouldn't have been around this long.

"But the organization may also set standards for how much power an Energy Star-approved console should draw when actively playing a game or video, which might compel console makers to scale back their systems' processing power a bit."

NOT A CHANCE, lol. Ok, so lets say Im thinking of buying an Xbox. It doesnt have the Energy Star rating. Am I going to buy a Wii or a Playstation instead because they have energy star ratings? NOPE. Im still buying an Xbox. If you are a kid and you want an Xbox, are you going to be OK with the fact that your Mom bought you a Wii because it had the energy star rating. NOPE. If you are anyone considering buying a console, does energy usage EVER come into the equation? NOPE. Also, what do gamers crave? Better graphics. You are not going to get Crysis looking games on the console by scaling back the processor. The first console maker to break away from the standard is going to have an advantage, better graphics. Gamers are screaming for better graphics not lower processing power(and therefore lower graphics). Personally if i were MS or Sony, I wouldnt give a damn about the EPA, or an Energy Star rating.

This is a fair argument, but I think later on in the console generation, when a parent is deciding which of the $200 systems to get for her little Jimmy (who just wants to shoot things in Call of Duty 12), the cost of operation might factor into the decision. Thats where Energy Star might play a large role.

The Energy Star requirements are not exactly something you want to be lauding as a high standard. Any mild efforts towards power savings, ignoring desire for certification, blow way past them. But yes, all next gen consoles should feature some form of hibernate to disk as a matter of features, not necessarily just for energy savings, but practicality. Where reasonable, they should be integrated into the current hardware in updates. I eagerly await the article about the compatibility issues that brings, purely for entertainment.

I have absolutely no problem with him putting the 30% figure in the paper. His only problem is that he did not properly explain where the figure came from. It is a valid scientific process to use ethnographic information, even if informally gathered, in order to make an educated guess. The only problem you can have is if you do not properly explain where your figures came from.

The reason it is OK is because you can easily run the numbers with different percentages. I'm not sure why you guys think he should have simply thrown his hands up and said "Fuck if I know!" when it is just a simple linear formula to calculate energy savings at different levels.

I'm also surprised by all the people who are offended by being told to save energy. All things being equal it certainly seems better to use a console as a gaming machine only when you are attending to it and use a heater as a heater the rest of the time. How can you lecture other people about entropy and at the same time be dismissive of efforts to reduce energy consumption?

Sure, we are going to use up all available energy, but let's slow it down as much as we can please.

Problem with 'auto-power down' is that many games only allow you to save at X spot. If you are far from the next X spot, you can lose a lot of data with auto-power down, unless they are talking about just cutting back on the power usage.

When my laptop enters hibernation mode, it saves the state of windows and all of my programs while maintaining minimum power consumption.

So there's no reason that MS/Sony/Nintendo can't do this for the Wii-U/720/PS4.... but I agree that they can't just make a patch on this generation because games were not designed to take advantage of this.

Obviously there would be an option to turn it off, but they're suggesting that we all wake up tomorrow and have that default switched to on- I have a problem with that.

It's important to note that if you have electric heat (which is actively in use - that is, it's not the middle of summer) then there is absolutely *no* waste from leaving your console, your lights, your computer, etc. on full-time. Any "waste" from your electrical devices is simply emitted in the form of heat.

No, that's not important to note because it's wrong. At least with the current way we create the major part of the energy we use for electricity and heating, which is burning coal, oil or natural gas. You are confusing energy and entropy here. It is true that you can convert the energy of electricity to heat with an efficiency of 100% but you can never create electricity from fossil fuels with an efficiency of 100%. There is a theoretical limit on the efficiency given by the temperature difference of the burning process and the environment. Look up Thermal efficiency or Carnot's theorem on Wikipedia.